Nearly all investigations by Israeli police into reports of violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians end in failure, a report by an Israeli human rights group said today.
In a year-long study of the actions of the Israeli police in the West Bank, rights group Yesh Din found that 90 per cent of investigations into settler violence against Palestinians failed because files were lost or closed due to "lack of evidence".
Yesh Din was unable to give comparative figures for the percentage of cases that end in failure in Israel.
The police said they were studying the report and would make changes if need be but that all efforts were made to investigate crimes and record testimony from witnesses.
Yesh Din said its findings and other similar studies showed that "Israel is abusing its obligation to defend the Palestinian civilian population in the occupied Palestinian territories against the criminality of Israeli civilians.
"Failures abound in all stages of law enforcement in cases of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank," Yesh Din (Hebrew for "there is law") said in its 148-page report.
The privately funded group takes no official position on the legality of West Bank settlements, branded illegal by the World Court, but it says it is worried by human rights violations as a result of the occupation.
The Israeli police force in the West Bank ultimately falls under the command of the Israeli army, which has occupied the territory since the 1967 Middle East war.
Yesh Din said the police had failed on several counts, including not taking testimony from key witnesses, rarely conducting identification line-ups of Israeli suspects and not checking Israeli alibis.